Work Zone Safety Clearinghouse Website Sets Monthly Visitor Record

More than 20,000 digital visitors to the National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse website in April smashed the previous monthly record by 23 percent. The increase was driven in part by the annual National Work Zone Awareness Week, April 8-12.

The Clearinghouse was created in 1997 through a cooperative agreement between ARTBA and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) is another key partner.

Found at workzonesafety.org, the website was launched in December 2007 after a decade of providing roadway construction zone safety information by telephone, fax, email, and regular mail. About 5,000 users visited the website during the first month, and monthly traffic doubled to 11,000 by the end of 2008. It climbed to 16,749 visitors in April 2018, the previous monthly record.

Last month’s new record of 20,607 visitors can be attributed to several factors, said TTI website manager Hong Yu. Advertising for the National Work Zone Awareness Week page of the Clearinghouse website began earlier this year and was linked from other sites, such as FHWA and ARTBA.

Constant updates and new resources on the Clearinghouse website also help draw visitors interested in work zone safety information. Three fourths of the traffic to the website came through search engines, and more than 19,000 were new users.